August 04, 2005

What Judy Miller did as an embed in Iraq, Part one

by emptywheel

I apologize for the Judy obsession. But hey, Judy obsession is all the rage these days. And while I'll leave Arianna to gather gossip about Judy's special relationship with the leader of the unit she embedded with...

And no fewer than four sources have either e-mailed, called, or, in one
case, run up to me on the street to tell me that what I termed Miller's
"especially close relationship" with Chief Warrant Officer Richard
Gonzales, the leader of the WMD-hunting unit Miller was embedded with
during the war, might have been, well, very close indeed.

...I'd like to look more closely at what Judy seemed to be doing in Iraq--on her day job. Because whether or not Judy was involved in the Plame Affair, she certainly was involved in a parallel pursuit, managing the public's expectation that we would find WMDs.

Judy embedded with a group that was poorly-prepared to hunt down WMDs--but was given the central role in the first days of the war nevertheless. While there, she engaged in a pattern--announcing a big find, then quietly rescinding that claim shortly thereafter. She also used her influence (including her direct influence on Gonzales, apparently) to shift the unit's focus away from examining suspected WMD sites to finding Iraqi officials, most supplied by Ahmed Chalabi, who offered convenient excuses for the absence of WMDs. Meanwhile, over the course of her embed, Judy set the foundation--and created excuses--for the Bush Administration's "surprise" realization that they might not find WMDs in Iraq.

ArrivalJudy arrives in Iraq after stops in northern Iraq, to cover a meeting of Iraqi opposition leaders (basically the INC) and then Kuwait, to cover some of the preparations. Her first article on the disarmament teams appears on March 19 on the first day of the war. Her first report of a possible find (supposed indications that bio or chemical agents may have been stored in Najaf) appears on March 27. Her first profile of the 75th Exploitation Force--her embed unit--appears on March 31. From this point forward, Judy spends the month of April hunting down lead after lead.

One note about this timing. Judy arrives in Iraq after the the IAEA has cast doubt on the Niger documents and after Cheney's group is reported to have started its work-up on Wilson, both of which took place in early March. So whatever Judy's doing in Iraq, many of her favorite sources are in DC trying to silence doubts about the evidence used to make the case for war, based on WMDs.

Judy Burns a SourceOn April 5, Judy co-bylines an article with Doug Jehl, describing increasing doubts in DC that arms will be found. I talked briefly about this article here. The remarkable thing about this article is not the content--it seems likely that Jehl did most of the work, interviewing people in DC. Rather, it's the effort Judy makes (misquoting a source and then releasing her name) to give a name and a voice to increasing doubts that the Americans would find WMDs. And why would Judy be interviewing people in DC, anyway? This burn is honestly something I don't understand. But it seems that, before Judy even begins her series of "finds," she is advancing the notion that the Americans might not find WMDs.

Series of "Finds" followed by "Backtracks"The first part of Judy's embed, she seems to establish a pattern where she announces a find, then a few days later refutes or drops that find. First, it's equipment for bio- or chem-warfare production in Karbala (found April 11, April 12; withdrawn April 16). Then it's radioactive materials at Tuwaitha (found May 4, never actually withdrawn, but we know this site was the IAEA supervised site). Then a chemical warehouse in Baghdad (found April 24, withdrawn April 28). Perhaps the most ridiculous Judy "Find-Backtrack" was a Chalabi tip about an ancient Jewish text (found May 7, May 9)--to which I'll return. Needless to say, there ended up being no ancient text. The last of Miller's major "finds" is the mobile weapon lab, about which she first publishes an article May 8, then May 11, and then, with William Broad, May 21; the claim would be retracted on June 7, after Judy had returned to the States.

You might be able to attribute these false alarms to the nerves of being in a war zone or the anticipation for a big find. But the standards of logic Judy's unit used are really astoundingly bad. Regard their process of eliminating any legitimate possibilities for the "mobile weapons trailer":

He said the team had tried to eliminate other possible explanations for
the lab. First, they discounted the possibility that the lab was
intended to be a decoy. They also dismissed the possibility that it was
a nuclear reactor on wheels, or that it held any other nuclear-related
equipment. Also discounted was the theory that the lab was intended to
produce missile fuel, propellant or explosives. The equipment was not
appropriate for those functions, they said.

Nuclear reactor on wheels???!?! Except for the decoy possibility, all of these possibilities would indicate some kind of illicit purpose. Did they even consider allowed purposes? Well, the bio-expert did, but then assumed the presence of scrubbers had to indicate a desire for secrecy. And what of the Iraqis' explanation, that it was used for producing hydrogen balloons (the purpose, of course, that US experts finally decided the trailer served). Well, the Americans ignored the Iraqis. And then there's this little bit of evidence,

The lab was mobile, the team concluded, despite the fact that zthere
[sic] were no shock absorbers between the tires' rubber and the lab floor.

And out of this evidence, we get this kind of certainty:

All three Team Charlie members said they were certain that future tests
would confirm that the trailer was evidence of a weapons program.

I don't know if we can blame Judy for the credulity of her unit. But these people were clearly inclined to see WMDs hiding under every bush.

Shift to HumInt, Courtesy of Ahmed Chalabi and Judy MillerBut soon, these futile investigations of WMD sites prove too unproductive. And, apparently at the intervention of Judy, part of the unit shifts its focus away from investigating suspected sites to interviewing Iraqis associated with WMD programs. Here's how Judy's article describes this shift.

"The paradigm has shifted,'' said a member of the Mobile
Exploitation Team Alpha, an American military team hunting for
unconventional weapons in Iraq. ''We've had a conceptual jump in how we
think about, and what we look for in Iraq's program. We must look at
the infrastructure, not just for the weapons.'' [is this Gonzales? Sounds like it might be.]

The team member spoke to this reporter, who was accompanying the group.

Now, it appears that this shift is the troop movement Howard Kurtz tells us Judy intervened in. We know Judy was working with Chalabi on April 21, because that's when he turns over Saddam Hussein's son-in-law to her group. And that is the same day she writes a note to complain about the troop pull-back.

"I see no reason
for me to waste time (or MET Alpha, for that matter) in Talil. . . .
Request permission to stay on here with colleagues at the Palestine
Hotel til MET Alpha returns or order to return is rescinded. I intend
to write about this decision in the NY Times to send a successful team
back home just as progress on WMD is being made."

And it is just two days before she publishes the article describing this paradigm shift. But paradigm shift is not how people interviewed by Kurtz describe it.

"Our
desire was to pull these guys back in," said an officer who served
under McPhee, adding that it was "quite a surprise" that the order was
reversed.

As
for MET Alpha's seeming independence, this officer said: "The way
McPhee phrased it for [staff] consumption was, 'I know they have gone
independent, I know they have gone rogue, but by God at least they're
doing something.' But if they're doing something, where's the meat? It
didn't pan out." [my emphasis]

They've "gone rogue." Judy and some members of the unit she has embedded with have "gone rogue." Which makes it an entirely different issue that she was invoking the name of Rummy and Feith to be able to remain rogue.

One
military officer, who says that Miller sometimes "intimidated" Army
soldiers by invoking Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or
Undersecretary Douglas Feith, was sharply critical of the note.
"Essentially, she threatened them," the officer said, describing the
threat as that "she would publish a negative story." [my emphasis]

Judy threatened to appeal to Rummy or Feith not just to keep troops in a particular location. No, she invoked Rummy's name to keep a group in Baghdad, working with Chalabi, pursuing a task for to they were neither trained or assigned.

But they were not just working with Chalabi. They were working with Chalabi contacts as well, just as Judy (and the OSP) had done in the run-up to war. Some of these contacts are real targets, and Judy's access to them serves to make Judy, and her close "friend" Richard Gonzales, look good. Here Judy describes Gonzales taking Saddam's son-in-law into custody.

After the two men arrived at Mr. Chalabi's temporary residence here,
they were questioned by an American intelligence official and then
handed over to Chief Warrant Officer Richard L. Gonzales, the leader of
a Pentagon Mobile Exploitation Team that has been hunting for
unconventional weapons in Iraq. Mr. Gonzales, who happened to be
meeting tonight with Mr. Chalabi to discuss nonproliferation issues,
turned the two men over to military command headquarters at Baghdad's
international airport.

[This article appeared on April 21, the day Judy objects to being pulled back from Baghdad.]

So this Chalabi connection was somewhat legitimate, even if Judy's unit had no experience in interrogation. Anyway, as one of Chalabi's aide said (in Kurtz' June article), it's a good story.

A
top aide to Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, Zaab Sethna, said
he didn't know whether Miller arrived that day "because she's old
friends with Dr. Chalabi or because she wanted to introduce that team
she was working with to the INC." But he said the idea of transferring
Sultan to the MET Alpha squad originated in a conversation with Miller.

"We
told Judy because we thought it was a good story," Sethna said. "We
needed some way to get the guy to the Americans."

Comments

Your first installment of the embed calls to mind two perhaps peripheral figures, one of whom definitely spent considerable time in Iraq, Amb. Wilson, the other, a civilian who might shrug at the perils and erratic zone behavior in which your thorough account describes Ms. Miller as engaging, William Perry. There was a Secy of Defense with forebearance. I wonder if either of those gentlemen knew her. She has years experience in the middle east.

Impeding or impairing both the intelligence and military communities, in extralegal pursuit of political aims. Again. These people are way outside the normal scope of the discretion afforded to governmental actors.

Yup. Taking custody of Jamal Sultan al-Tikriti may itself fit into the objectives of the Americans. But having him interrogated first by people who are not at all trained to do so? That certainly qualifies as impeding the intelligence community.

I'm not usually given over to tinfoilery. But given what we've learned so far in this affair - and what I expect you have in store for us in upcoming installments - I find it rather amazing that the Dubyanocchio regime didn't, as some conspiratorialists opined would occur, actually embed some WMDs in Iraq. Were they so sure they would find the real thing that they failed to opt for this as a back-up plan?

My theory? They didn't HAVE to plant WMDs, or at least they thought they didn't have to. Remember, we're an empire now. We create our own reality. We don't need "real" WMDs. We can just say we found them--or have Judy Miller do it for us. And that'll be enough. Because we're an empire, you know.

One more thing about intelligence. Remember that the CIA didn't give all the info on suspected sites to Blix, even though Tenet promised Congress (and Levin specifically) that they had. I've always assumed they didn't give them the sites because they didn't want the inspectors to go to them all and prove them all false. But perhaps they don't do so because they want to set up this fake search for WMDs?

I keep wondering whether Cheney, whom I suspect of being the mastermind behind much of the war lies and intel abuse, really believed that Saddam had WMD or whether he was completely cynical. Rummy too.

Remember, the background was that after Gulf War I they were quite taken aback to find how advanced Saddam's WMD programs were. They never suspected their (former) good buddy of such treachery. So over the next 10 years they went overboard in the other direction, believing he not only still had the WMD but was even farther along than he had been in 1991.

Saddam, of course, realized that WMD wasn't going to help him against the overwhelming force of the US, but wanted to keep his image as the big bad dude. So he destroyed the WMD as he was told to do, but then kicked out the inspectors in 1998 when he suspected they were actually CIA trying to locate his supposed vulnerabilities, leaving some ambiguity. By the time that admitting he had no WMDs was his only ticket to survival, the Bushies were so far along in their war preparations, and so invested in the project, that they either would not or could not believe him.

Certainly BushCo knew that Saddam had no nuclear weapons, even if they really thought he still wanted them. They may have suspected, I suppose, that he might have some bioweapons or nerve gas or other chemical weapons. But if they seriously suspected that, wouldn't they have secured the weapons sites? Remember there was yellowcake lying around at Tuwaitha, a known site since it was the IAEA-supervised one, and yet the Army left it unguarded and all the stuff was removed.

That is the biggest conundrum--and the best evidence that BushCo knew there were no WMDs--they made no effprt to really secure them, just sent a sort of clown force with a PR person (Miller) to look for the WMDs that were the supposed key cause of the war. Crazy.

Khidhir Hamza and Imad Khadduri, two Iraqis with intimate knowledge of the nuclear program, had totally different stories to tell about it. Both have been called tools of the CIA and Saddam, respectively, for their points of view.

This is an excellent review of Judith's reporting from the war zone. What it says to me, in summary is that she was looking for the evidence to back up her pre-war reporting, and not being a true journalist -- namely observing and reporting the What's When's and How's of the war zone. It is flagrent evidence of bias of the worst kind. Even worse is the assumption she apparently made that she could trade the front page of the Times for things she whated.

One thing that bothered me in the run up to the war was the misuse of the history of the Occupation of Germany in 1945 as a sort of mythical model for what would happen. Condi in particular made claims that said to me that she knew absolutely nothing about the German Military Occupation and how it was planned, organized and deployed. It is a huge subject -- but one little part of it is instructive, the Military Government's first objective on entering any German district, village or City was to disarm the population -- and I mean disarm. (They confiscated the pig slaughtering knives for instance). Somehow I feel they had the National Rifle Ass. as primary advison on the occupation plan, as they instituted no rules at all regarding arms. In contrast, in Germany the occupation law was that if any military ordinance was on your property, and undeclared, you could be shot. (they did not shoot many.)

The other failures were 1) no census, 2) no strict controls on travel, and 3) no quick development of local government with limited scope (garbage collection for example.) There is a whole book to be written on George Marshall's theory of successful occupation leading into political reconstruction, but the crime in the case of 2003 was that all too many Military Historians know about all this and they kept their mouths shut -- or were dismissed.

WRT the question of what Dick was thinking...As I continue to write this series (and read about Chalabi's role in some of the deplorable Shiite violence in the south, I get all confused again.

I know, for example, that I was thoroughly convinced that Chalabi had been working with Iran all the way through this, probably to further his own interests, but it was still unclear where is allegiances lay. So is it Dick Cheney fixing the intelligence in Iraq, or the Iranians? Or were the Iranians just that smart to know that we knew there were no WMDs, but that we would use the claim to go to war? Whose side is Michael Ledeen on, anyway?

But the rest of this series certainly supports your clown force with a PR person theory, Mimikatz. MET Alpha was disbanded in April or May, and then there was a lull before they brought in David Kay and the people who had real experience as inspectors.

I wonder whether maybe there really is the possibility that Cheney, et al. knew there were no WMD, or far fewer than suspected. If you take as your model the Reagan-era hysteria over Soviet military power, then you already know that the political price of finding out later that the threats were hollow is nil, just so long as you're able to tie the endgame to the toppling of an "evil empire."

Wheel--I think Chalabi was working for Chalabi. Iran and Chalabi? A marriage of convenience.

Cheney and Ledeen? Maybe it is like cops who fabricate evidence to strengthen their case. They generally do it because they believe that the perp did it, or at least that if he didn't do that, he did something else for which he deserves to be convicted.

Whatever they believed in early 2001 (no WMD) or before the war ("the rationale we could all agree on"), they certainly knew at the time of the invasion itself, or they would have behaved differently.

Don't ever forget one factlet from the 1990's. When the Clinton Administration, in response to confirmed i8ntelligence about Iran's sponsorship of certain terrorist attacks, put much more substantial financial sanctions on Iran, it was Dick Cheney, then with Halliburton, who led the opposition to Clinton's attempt to pressure Iran. (See Chapter 5, in Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies" -- chapter about how Clinton almost went to war against Iran in 1996.

Clarke made the Iran-Halliburton-Clarke story its single chapter for a good reason. My sense is that Cheney may seem to want to go to war with Iran, along with the neo-cons, but in reality, if I read Clarke carefully, Cheney may be allied with Iran.

Clarke -- Wilson, all the rest of this gang of "formerly High Ranking" types want us to understand some of the inner reality, but they are all stoppered up like someone with a huge sinus cold because they are witting to secrets. We have to learn the skills of the folk in the old Soviet Union and E. Europe -- How to read around and inbetween the lines.

I also remember what Pat Lang said when the whole Chalabi spy thing came out. He pretty much said we had been snookered about the whole war. Lang is certainly someone I put some trust into.

As you'll see in Installment 4, I just think finding a solution to who forged the Niger documents may involve some rethinking of our understanding of Iran's role. Which makes sense, since Michael Ledeen was involved.

(Mimikatz, Saddam didn't kick out the inspectors, the US forced them out.)

By looking at Canadian and UK sources, and some lesser know US sources, it was possible for me to determine in the fall before the war that all WMD programs had ended in Iraq 10 years before. Many of these sources were public or leaks from the CIA where most competent analysts knew this. A conservative influential element in our military/polical/intelligence leadership community didn't believe this. When Bush assumed power theses were the ones put in positions of authority. There they had a chance to put in their plan to create an American Empire for this century and step one was an Iraq under US control and with US military bases.